


Our kingdom come

by amberfox17



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Anglo-Saxon, Angst, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Seduction, Vikings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 21:21:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1362151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amberfox17/pseuds/amberfox17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vikings (TV) inspired AU ficlets: Thor is a Viking Jarl who has attacked the lands of Loki, the King of Anglo-Saxon Wessex. Loki invites Thor to join him in his private baths, as he has an interesting proposition for him...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MartyMc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MartyMc/gifts).



> So this isn't actually a fic, but two short scenes from an AU Marty and I have been talking about, based on the 'Eye for an Eye' episode of Vikings. Chapter 1 is the first proper meeting of Jarl Thor and King Loki.

“They say you sacked Lindisfarne,” Loki says. “Looted the church and desecrated the altar with the blood of holy men.”

Opposite him, Thor looms like a sea cliff in fog, the steam from the thermal baths swirling around arms as thick and as knotted as tree trunks. He is raw power, elemental force, and he is as out of place in the King’s ancient sanctuary as he was in his court, where he and his followers snarled and tore at their food like wolves. They say he and his brutes did worse than merely murder on Lindisfarne; they say they stole the innocence of the monks and acolytes, despoiled their flesh and likely their souls before delivering them up to Heaven’s judgement.

Loki hopes it is true.

Thor grunts. “We raided an island in the north, aye. What of it?”

“You raided, yes. You came like a storm from the sea, and back you went…as raiders always do. Yet here you are in my kingdom, a guest at my table, and you speak of trade and land and settlement. You will forgive me for finding it a tad…incongruous.”

Thor shifts in the water, his thick torc and heavy armbands glinting in the light from the braziers as he moves. The waves he summons lap at Loki’s chest, dance over his nipples and caress his throat. Sea-wolves, these Vikings are called: ravening and raging across the coastal fringes, plunging inland and them vanishing into the mist and seaspray. That is what they are; that is what they do. Yet this one…seeks something else.

Well, Loki has a thick pile of warm, plush wolfskins strewn across his bed, and he has skimmed across the treacherous seas of politics and warfare all his life, and he has not drowned yet. It is not fear of this warlord that has him shuddering even in the heat of his private baths.

“My land is a poor land for farming,” Thor says bluntly. “This one a rich one. Gold and treasure I can take back. But good, black soil and warm summers? That I cannot take, and that is what my people need.”

Loki hums thoughtfully and moves closer, fanning the blood-warm water through his fingers and sending his own ripples through the placid pool to play over the warrior’s scarred skin. “You are a King, then, in your own land, that you have people to protect, to care for?”

“No,” Thor says. “I am a Jarl only.” This is delivered flatly, plainly, as the unvarnished truth; though Loki listens keenly for it, there is no note of frustrated ambition, of a hunger for power and wealth and the trappings of status. How dull.

“You will understand that I am somewhat concerned about how my land will manage to support both my people and your own,” Loki says, still moving forward, his long, dark hair a slick shadow on the water. Thor watches him come.

“I would have peaceful dealings with you if I can,” Thor says, easy and unafraid. “But we will come, whether you welcome us or no.”

“Ah,” Loki says, amused and enraged by the casual confidence, the breathtaking arrogance. Somehow, it seems a feeling he knows of old. “It is to the good then, that I have a proposition for you.”

“Oh?” Thor says, barely a handspan from the Loki, his sky-bright eyes darkening as Loki leans forward and places one pale hand on his chest.

“Fight for me,” Loki says, voice low, his breath whispering over the rivulets of water and sweat that trickle over Thor’s taut muscles. “Help me to conquer this island, to forge a new kingdom from the blood and tears of my enemies, and then rule beside me, our people one people, our land one land. I will give everything you could ever desire, if only you will lend me your strength and your skill, if only you will pledge yourself to me.”

“Everything?” Thor asks, heart thundering beneath Loki’s palm.

“Everything,” Loki promises, looking up at Thor from beneath his lashes, letting his hand slide lower, fingertips trailing down and into the water, following the firm flesh lower and lower until he finds what he needs.

Thor groans. “You are not a man,” he says, licking his lips. “This place – this place was not built by mortal hands – you are a spirit, a landvættir, born of these waters and this stone. My mother was a seeress, a saekona, and she walked with the gods. You have their touch.”

Loki laughs. “I am a King,” he says, edging closer. “I am your King. Swear it, and you will have your land, your glory and -” He twists his wrist and the warrior shudders. “Aught else you might ask for.”

Thor reaches for him, broad palms cupping Loki’s buttocks and pulling them flush against each other, waters breaking and slapping against them. “You are my King,” he says, mouthing at Loki’s neck. “I will fight your war and win you a mighty kingdom, and then I shall bring my people here, to farm your fertile fields and fuck your pretty girls. I will have gold and glory to share with my shieldbrothers and sisters, and stories will be told of our deeds for ages to come. And I will have you, Vættr –King, in my arms and on my cock, and for every command of yours I obey in battle, I will have you obey one of mine in bed. This I swear, by my father, the High God Odin, most wise and terrible, receiver of the slain and bringer of victory.”

“Very good,” Loki says, laughter thrumming through him, and as he returns Thor’s embrace their shadows writhe across the walls like a half-forgotten dream, the dark King and the golden warrior, their bodies entwined lie the threads of fate, picking out a path and pattern they can but dimly sense amid the stone and steam.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a scene much further on in the AU, after Thor has conquered the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms for Loki.
> 
> [Click here for Marty's gorgeous artwork for this scene!](http://marty-mc.tumblr.com/post/80595579738/you-will-tell-me-why-thor-snarls-down-at-him)

“I should kill you now,” Thor growls, voice hoarse from his battle-cries. He stinks of blood and sweat and incense, the latter from where he had smashed the fragrance chalice against a guard’s head, leaving them choking on ash and dust, eyes stinging from the acrid smoke that had billowed from the sharp glass fragment, stumbling blindly about, hands and weapons outstretched and trembling.

They hadn’t lasted long, after that.

“Mmm,” Loki says, licking at his copper-tainted lips. In his fury, Thor had all but torn the guards limb from limb; he should be grateful, really, that all he has suffered so far is a punch to the face that, while painful, does not seem to have actually broken anything. A small mercy from a ravening berserker, especially given that Loki had, technically, caused the confrontation by failing to drive the poisoned dagger deeply enough into Thor’s exposed flesh.

“You will tell me why,” Thor snarls down at him, fingers flexing on his axe-shaft, looming over Loki’s kneeling form like the old gods he clings to, gory and huge and terrible. Loki worships a most merciful and forgiving god, insofar as mouthing the required words and collecting richly jewellery icons count as worship. But he can see why the northmen resist conversion. Looking at Thor, it is all too easy to believe the tales of giants and gods and monsters still recited in the meadhall, and easier still to agree with Thor’s conviction that his father was no mortal man, but instead the High God of blood and death and battle-madness.

“Why what?” Loki says, looking up at Thor from beneath his lashes, mouth flooded with the metallic tang of his own blood.

“Why you have turned on me,” Thor says harshly and Loki hums again thoughtfully. The old gods do not forgive. But if Thor wanted him dead, he would already be dead, like his hapless retinue, whose mutilated bodies litter the ground around them like fallen leaves.

“I am a King,” he replies, baring his blood-stained teeth in a feral grin. “Kings do not share.”

“We had a deal,” Thor says, chest heaving more now than when he hacked through Loki’s men, emotion proving more troublesome to him that the exertion of slaughter. “You gave me your word. I would win this island for you, and you would allow me to settle my people here. I swore loyalty to you – I did not ask for kingship, only to have my own rule and my own laws for my own kind.”

“Power _is_ Kingship,” Loki snaps. “And you might not want a crown now, but after a few winters? Once you are grown fat on your spoils, with a bulging brood of brats in need of wealth and honour of their own? You would make yourself a King in _my_ country, Thor Odinson, and that, I will not have.”

“So you would see me dead?” Thor says, mouth twisting. “After what we have shared? I have led your armies, destroyed your enemies and worshipped your flesh; we have been unstoppable together, united on the battlefield and the privacy of the bedchamber these many months. Has none of this meant anything to you?”

Loki cocks his head to the side and makes a play of thinking about it. He will not be baited into revealing himself, not like this. Thor is a brash and brutal warlord, a terrifying killer and a man whose heart belongs to the glory of war. Even if their time together had meant something to Loki, even if he had found a joy in Thor he had not thought himself capable of, even if he had, in the still of the night, allowed himself to dream wild things of things that cannot be – well, even if there were a truth unspoken in his heart, this would not be the time to set it free.

Their’s has been a profitable alliance, but he bought Thor’s company with his body and the promise of land. If Loki had delivered him both, what could he have offered then to keep him at his side? How could he debase himself further by begging Thor to stay? No, better to strike him down, better to prove his own power by having Thor dead at his feet than to gaze on his back as he left Loki behind.

“No,” Loki lies, the word a flat and tempered shield against the tumult that rages within him, a wall between his weakness and Thor’s irresistible self. “My throne is all I desire, and you are a threat to it.”

“Then you are a Vættr –King indeed,” Thor says bitterly. “You have no heart and no honour and I have been a fool indeed to think -” He bites off his words and turns his face away.

“To think what?” Loki spits, fear and fury splintering within him, as cold and as sharp as winter frost. “You have used me well, Northman, as is the manner of your kind. I have kept my word in bed as you have in battle. But the battles are done and so is our deal. Do not curse at me for striking before I could be struck, for ridding myself of you before you could rid yourself of me -”

Thor is on him before he even sees him move, one hand tight around his throat, the other locked against his chest, dragging him up and pinning him against the wall. “I would not have left you,” Thor says, low and deep, pure predator, his breath hot on Loki’s face. “I thought our arrangement more than just a passing alliance. I had thought that with the warring finished, we might find a peace together, that I might stand beside your throne, decked out in the armrings I have won for you, that you have given back to me. I had many dreams and plans, and in all them, you stood at the centre, the steady point around which my fate was woven. I have not _used_ you, Loki. But I see now that you have only ever been using me.”

Loki mewls faintly, incapable of any more dignified sound with Thor’s great strength turned against him. He did not think – he had not believed –

Thor stares at him from inches away, and there is such heartbreak writ across his face that Loki almost regrets what he has done, can almost feel a plea for forgiveness shaping on his tongue.

“Thor,” Loki forces out in a high hissing sob; “Thor -”

Thor silences him with a punishing kiss, all bruising force and teeth, and he still reeks like a slaughterhouse but Loki does not care and concentrates only on working his tongue between Thor’s lips, earning an anguished grunt and an easing of the pressure on his throat.

There is a powerful thigh forcing its way between his legs and he parts for it, lets his hips roll forward to meet it, trying and failing to do more as Thor leans into him, presses him firmly against the wall with his bulk. He can do nothing as Thor grinds against him, a hot and heavy weight even through his cloak and robes, save for keep kissing Thor, devouring the taste of him, giving himself up to Thor’s onslaught.

He thinks that there is salt upon his tongue, thinks that one or perhaps even both of them are weeping, but he will not think on it, cannot think on it, and so for long moments there is only the frenzy, only the frantic flexing of their bodies, thrumming with adrenalin and sorrow and desire until the bitter, blissful tide sweeps over them and flings them to completion.

The stillness of the aftermath does not last long; Thor releases him and steps away, and Loki shivers a little at the lack of his heat.

 “I can keep no faith with an oathbreaker,” Thor says, eyes distant, voice cracking even as the words ring out. “I will deliver you to the judgement of the gods and the people. _My_ gods. _My_ people. For I cannot trust myself with you any longer.”

Loki is a King: he will submit to no judgement but his own, and certainly not to the ramblings of peasants who fancy their own delusions the words of heathen gods. But even as he gathers breath to tell Thor so, he is being thrown aside, just another broken bauble scattered under Thor’s feet, and he feels the chains of fate closing around his wrists and slithering to his throat.

“Thor,” he chokes, and then again, louder: “Thor!”

But Thor keeps walking away, a grim and bloodied warrior indifferent to the wailing of the vanquished, and it is the very nightmare Loki thought to slay, for Thor is leaving him, and there is nothing he can do.

Loki slowly sinks to his knees, a huddled figure in a swath of ink-black feathers, and lets his head fall forward until his jewelled crown begins to slip, until the gold- and gem-encrusted circlet tumbles from his brow to be caught by nimble fingers before it can shatter against the blood-soaked ground.

“I am a King,” Loki says in the silence, but not so much as an echo deigns to answer him.

 


End file.
